The Atayal language is spoken by the Atayal people of Taiwan. Squliq and C’uli’ (Ts’ole’) are two major dialects. Mayrinax and Pa’kuali’, two subdialects of C’uli’, are unique among Atayal dialects in having male and female register distinctions in their vocabulary.

The language is recorded in an Atayal–English dictionary by Søren Egerod and several reference grammars. The Bible has been translated into Atayal and was published in 2002. Atayal is written in the Latin script. Atayal was one of the source languages of Yilan Creole Japanese.

Contents

Orthography

The Atayal language is most commonly written in the Latin script. ⟨ng⟩ represents the velar nasal /ŋ/, and the apostrophe ⟨'⟩ represents the glottal stop. In some literature, ⟨ḳ⟩ is used to represent /q/ and ⟨č š ž⟩ are used to represent /tʃ ʃ ʒ/.

In some dialects but not all, schwa /ə/ is frequently omitted in writing, resulting in long consonant clusters on the surface (e.g. pspngun/pəsəpəŋun/).[3]

The pronunciation of certain letters differs from the IPA conventions. The letter ⟨b⟩ represents /β/, ⟨c⟩ is /ts/, ⟨g⟩ is /ɣ/, ⟨y⟩ is /j/, and ⟨z⟩ is /ʒ/.

Phonology

Atayal people reside in central and northern Taiwan, along the Hsuehshan mountains. The image depicts two major dialect groups of Atayal language.

Dialects differ slightly in their phonology. Presented below are the vowel and consonant inventories of Mayrinax Atayal (Huang 2000a). Orthographic conventions are added in <angle brackets>.

Vowels

Consonants

Most of these sounds are also encountered in other Formosan languages, but the velar fricative [x] is a trade mark of Atayalic languages. This sound has restricted distribution, though, as it never occurs in word-initial position.

Even though some literature includes a glottal fricative in the consonant inventory, that phoneme is phonetically realized as a pharyngeal (Li 1980), which is true for Atayalic languages in general. The alveolar fricative (s) and affricate (ts) are palatalized before [i] and [j], rendering [ɕ] and [tɕ], respectively (Lu 2005), as in the Sinitic contact languages Mandarin Chinese and Taiwanese Hokkien.

Plngawan Atayal (a subdialect of Ci'uli') differs from this inventory in that it lacks a schwa (ə), and that there are two phonemic rhotics (Shih 2008).

Squliq Atayal has a voiced alveo-palatal fricative [z] (Li 1980), but Huang 2015 doubts its phonemicity, arguing that it is an allophone of [y].

Pronouns

The Mayrinax and Wulai Atayal personal pronouns below are sourced from Huang (1995). In both varieties, the nominative and genitive forms are bound while the neutral and locative ones are free (unbound).

Wulai Atayal Personal Pronouns

Type of Pronoun

Nominative

Genitive

Locative

Neutral

1s.

sakuʔ, kuʔ

makuʔ, mu, kuʔ

knan

kuzing, kun

2s.

suʔ

suʔ

sunan

isuʔ

3s.

-

nyaʔ

hiyan

hiyaʔ

1p. (incl.)

taʔ

taʔ

itan

itaʔ

1p. (excl.)

sami

myan

sminan

sami

2p.

simu

mamu

smunan

simu

3p.

-

nhaʔ

hgan

hgaʔ

Mayrinax Atayal Personal Pronouns

Type of Pronoun

Nominative

Genitive

Neutral

1s.

cu, ciʔ

mu, miʔ

kuing

2s.

suʔ, siʔ

suʔ

isuʔ

3s.

-

niaʔ

hiyaʔ

1p. (incl.)

taʔ, tiʔ

taʔ, tiʔ

itaʔ

1p. (excl.)

cami

niam

cami

2p.

cimu

mamu

cimu

3p.

-

nhaʔ

nhaʔ

Affixes

The following list of Mayrinax Atayal affixes is sourced from the Comparative Austronesian Dictionary (1995).